Do males and females differ in how they perceive and elaborate on agent-based recommendations in Internet-based selling?

Managers are eager to know whether they should use gender-specific strategies to communicate with male and female consumers differently to recommendation services in Internet-based selling, as both groups are worthwhile and profitable to target. This issue has been overlooked in the literature, despite its importance and the fact that recommendations have become a major online advertising tactic in recent years. This study is diverse from existing studies in three ways: testing recommendation agent acceptance in the information context, revealing gender effects and applying a new lens of cognition-conation. By proposing a theoretical model based on the advertising hierarchy of effects model, this study investigated consumers' elaboration processes towards recommendation agent advices. Based on 432 members randomly selected from a database of a well-known Internet-based sellers, the study finds that women consider perceived usefulness of recommendation agent advices to a greater extent than men while making decisions about the usefulness of recommendations. Further, consumers' perceived usefulness is more strongly influenced by their perceived shopping task uncertainty than by involvement, while more-involved consumers have lower levels of perceive shopping task uncertainty. (C) 2010 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.